Linnahall Renovation Project Stalls
Contradicting the Tallinn mayor's recent optimism, the city government said negotiations for the renovations of the Linnahall convention center have come to a halt.
The mayor had said in December that a deal could be reached within a month. For now, it seems the former sports arena, once an architectural gem built for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and later a night club, will quietly continue crumbling as old layers of graffiti are replaced by new ones.
"Regarding the Linnahall, the City of Tallinn has made its terms clear, and there are some points that we will not abandon. So far, the city has not received a reply from its partner and progress has been stymied,” an advisor to the deputy mayor said last week, according to a Postimees report.
In 2010, the city government announced that it had struck a deal with Tallinn Entertainment LLC, a company founded by Ronald S. Lauder, CEO of cosmetics giant Estee Lauder, to develop the facility. However, signs of construction have yet to materialize.
The director of the National Opera has suggested transforming the Linnahall building sitting on Tallinn's waterfront into a new opera house, as the current one, dating from 1913, loses out on big productions every year, its stage being half the size of foreign opera houses.
Ott Tammik